I am
by Sohei Fox
Summary: Based on a dream I had a few nights before writing this.


I remember my youth. I was an.... exuberant child, to say the least. Every   
holovid taken of me shows me laughing or playing or doing some other such   
activity. Sure, was also very hyper, but everyone loved my energy, my spunk. Te   
always told me that people like me are what the colonies were for... a reason to   
press on towards the future. I didn't have the slightest idea what the hell they   
meant, I was just a kid. I'd no idea what we were (as a race) running from. At   
least, until my 13th birthday, I didn't. On that night the sky was almost   
entirely lit up as a green meteorite cut a swath of flame through the air.   
Suddenly everyone was not so happy. Everyone was carrying around weapons, and   
they all told me to stay inside the town walls, not to wander anywhere near   
where the meteor crashed. I listened, surprisingly.  
  
And life continued as always, save for the patrols. Every night, a group of the   
adults would go out hunting. For what they would not tell me until my 15th   
birthday. That would be when I would be able to go out o my first hunt. They   
gave me a cannon that fired grenades of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen! That   
seemed preposterous to me, if we used that there would be noting left of what we   
hunted!  
  
I was not laughing quite so hard after my first encounter with them. A very   
young and small of the beasties floated inconspicuously out of a nearby tree and   
landed on my right hand's pinky. I felt nothing at first except the tickle of   
it's tentacles, they were almost as warm as my cat's tongue, which would awaken   
me every morning. I stared in wonderment at the little creature, it was   
absolutely beautiful, like the lights of a Christmas tree suspended in a tiny   
water filled globe, with electric streamers underneath.. I slung the cannon over   
my shoulder, and reached with my other hand to touch it. As the feelers   
surrounded my pinky though, I began to feel something. It was almost calming at   
first, as my finger simply stopped feeling, but then I felt a lurch in my chest   
and my vision began to get spots in it swimming about the perimeter of my   
vision.. growing ever larger, and threatening to cut off all sight of the world   
around me. With all I had left, I screamed, weakly.  
  
My mother turned to me and screamed far more loudly. My father turned as well,   
and his face paled a bit, before he set grimly to work. With two quick motions,   
he drew the knife from his bet-sheath, and sliced the creature clean in half. I   
could feel it's pain, coursing as a plaintive cry throughout my own veins. I   
began to weep for though it was cloven in two, the creature continued to live,   
briefly. And knew it was dying. I felt that pain, and never knew anything like   
it before.  
  
My hand was useless because of where the creature touched it. It had blackened,   
and every cell in my pinky had died. I could not be brought back to the village   
fast enough, and blood poisoning had set in. The hand had to be removed. The   
doctors replaced it with a cybernetic housing which was actually quite useful. I   
could use a hand, a welding torch, or any other countless manner of tools. Or,   
as I later did, I could mount weaponry there.  
  
For a little after my 18th birthday, the creatures actually attacked the   
village. We lived on the outskirts of it, and our house was one of the first   
hit. I do not know how I passed unscathed, but the rest of my family did not. I   
awoke the next morning to see my parents... blackened and devoid of life as my   
hand was. The stench was something I will never forget, even to this day where   
scent itself is a long distant memory for me.  
  
I came to hate them that day, and set out to learn all I could. I found that   
they were commonly called the Metroid, and they were a scourge upon the galaxy   
such as had never been known before. I found how they lived, the dirty   
parasites, and I sought them out and destroyed them wherever I found them. I   
once came upon one an entire mile around in size! As I primed my nitrogen to   
destroy it, I was shocked when it spoke to me. I was then disappointed when I   
found out it had little to say except to beg for it's life, so I ended it   
quickly. That my opponents were not thoughtless parasites only made me hate them   
more. Were they merely mindless, then they could not have chosen to kill this   
way, it would have been their nature. But they were not, even the smallest has   
the intelligence of a common house-dog. So it was worse, they were not merely   
amoral, they were immoral.  
  
I came to find the larger ones could all speak, and I questioned some of them   
before I destroyed them. With what I learned, I returned to the learned men of   
my village, and we eventually devised a way that I could actually drug up one of   
the Metroid to the point where it could have no will of it's own, and   
interestingly enough, could actually act as a power source for me. My abilities   
grew tenfold. Shortly after that, I experimented, successfully, with allowing   
them to merge with my own body to give me even greater power.  
  
Life became as a dream after that.. I could experience the thoughts of people   
around me in a hazy way, and I could intimately read the thoughts of a Metroid.   
in battle, they fell before me without ever striking a blow again. I became less   
and less of a woman and more and more of a killing machine. I slaughtered the   
Metroid wholesale, and every day blended together.. move, kill. Move, kill. I   
could even travel to other planets at that time, almost in the blink of an   
eye... or maybe it took eons, I do not know for sure. Eventually, I stopped   
killing. I don't really remember why, but I no longer slaughtered Metroid, I   
just... found them.. and do not remember what happened after that.  
  
I remember I one day decided to visit other people.. I visited a lot of people..   
I touched them, I learned their thoughts.. I felt their emotions, I wanted what   
they wanted. I experienced them... I devoured them. I was experiencing and   
devouring many, many at once. Sometimes they would talk to me, even. And   
sometimes, I was not even present to experience them. I would only experience   
them later when I.. contacted that part of me. Sometimes that part of me would   
ask for me to send other parts of me to go with it. It felt bizzare, but I   
complied.  
  
One day, though "day" is really a subjective term, I settled down to a planet. I   
was so large at this time that I could cover a whole planet at once, and I   
devoured everyone at the same time. I was awakened out of my dream. I recognized   
this place. I had just devoured my home world. And killed the descendants of   
everyone I loved. I had settled upon this planet, the third from it's sun, and   
drew all energy from it in an instant.  
  
I was horrified.  
  
But I was also saddened. I cast about desperately, and became lonely. There was   
nothing else alive but the rest of me. Anywhere. I wept, for how long I do not   
know, but I wept for what I had done. I wept for my foolishness, as I had set   
out to destroy the thing that destroyed my life, but I instead became this   
thing. I wept for the people I had devoured, for though I would never forget   
them... they no longer lived. But mostly I wept for myself, for I had become   
truly lonely. Nothing lived save for me... anywhere.  
  
But this was not as it had to be. No. I had absorbed much knowledge in my   
travels. I knew what I had to do... I could not be alone anymore. So I caressed   
this planet. With what energy I had, I renewed it's dying motherstar as easily   
as I would have patched up an animal's broken leg as a child. I fed the planet's   
core of the energy I had gathered, I gave the spark in it's oceans that would   
again begin new life. During this time I weakened greatly. I was made smaller,   
and I was not so spread out. But I continued to watch this planet, to guide it's   
upbringing. Not much to my surprise, I found when I looked outward that life was   
returning elsewhere, but I was a woman obsessed. I nurtured this planet as my   
own mother did me. I watched it, until one day, a race came forth.  
  
I imbued this race with the essence of my memories. I shaped the evolution of   
their companions to be like mine, that they to would have the joy of playing   
fetch with a faithful puppy, to be awakened by the hot breath of a kitten on   
their nose in the morn. I planted ideas with my dwindling power, that they too   
would celebrate the turning of seasons, and, in a moment of pure nostalgia, that   
they too would celebrate my favorite holiday.. The one which gave so much joy to   
me, which meant peace to me. They would decorate with lights their foliage...   
But I am babbling..  
  
I retreated to a far away place and watched these people, Time passed, and I   
grew smaller still until I was only on one world. I eventually saw one child..   
she reminded me so much of myself. The joy, the innocent happiness at everything   
around her.   
  
I knew she cloud be the one to give me peace at last.  
  
-----------------------------------------  
  
I am Samus Aran. Yea, the one you read about. I traveled far and wide,   
adventure, blah blah et fucking cetera. But all my career I was only really   
seeking one thing. The damned Metroids. The things that took my parents, and   
they also took my arms and legs, forcing me to get the implants you see now.   
Sexy, aren't they? Except for my gun arm, you wouldn't know me from any dancer   
or acrobat. But I did it. I got them. I killed every last one of those things   
and even eventually reached Mother Brain. It took a coupe of tries, but I   
finally got her.  
  
But now, I am dying. As I was leaving, by some freak failure of my armor's   
environmental protections, I caught a virus. It somehow copied me and is now   
slowly killing me. But I will have the last laugh, because according to the   
scientists here, I have a chance of survival, and mabe I can even get stronger.   
Maybe kill that cheap knock off of myself. And possibly even live afterwards.   
That would be nice.  
  
All I have to do is simple. Once yet again, a baby Metroid followed me out. It   
did not try to kill me, it just followed me, some basic form of racial survival.   
I was not going to fall for THAT one again so I caught it in stasis, and brought   
it back to this science station, where it was to be disposed of as soon as I was   
healthy enough to do it personally. But the scientists tell me this thing can   
save my life. All I have to do is attach it to me after drugging it up. They say   
it will lose it's intelligence and forever become docile, it will become one   
with me. I will do it, because I want to live.  
  
You know, I always did think Metroids were kinda beautiful. Kinda like...   
Christmas tree lights suspended in one of them old snow globes, you know? 


End file.
